


how to be something you miss

by noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 11:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11622201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth/pseuds/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth
Summary: "You should'vetold me." Sansa confronts Jon after he tells her he is leaving, and Jon tries to find a way to say goodbye. Missing scene from 7x02.





	how to be something you miss

Her face is flushed when she corners him in his solar that evening, her eyes so blue they burn. He tries not to look wounded; he tries not to look guilty. She is not Lady Catelyn. They are not children. She must understand that he does not want to journey to Dragonstone and bow before its new dragon queen, he does not want to leave his home and his people, but he is a king now and the Long Night is coming: he cannot be ruled by _want_.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she says, though of course she doesn’t sound sorry at all. And usually, he wouldn’t mind the interruption, the excuse to step away from the papers that Davos had piled before him — letters and lists, requests and demands, all items that must be dealt with, or at least looked over, before Jon sets out in the morning. Usually he would welcome the chance to rest his bleary eyes, to drink his ale and listen to his sister’s sweet voice telling him all of the workings of the castle, but tonight Sansa is spoiling for a fight.

Jon drags a hand over his beard, his mouth, his jaw that aches with the tension it holds. He will not speak to Sansa in anger. He doesn’t know when he will see her again. If he will see her again.

“Sansa,” he begins softly, standing to address her. “I know that you’re upset — ”

“You should’ve _told me_.” Her voice is a blade: flat, sharp. It strikes true. “Did it even occur to you that you might have discussed the matter with me, before you and Ser Davos recklessly decided that riding into a dragon’s mouth is the best course? At the very least you might have warned me of your decision before you announced it to the lords. Don’t I deserve that much, Jon?”

“But we did discuss it!” 

He tugs a hand through his hair to keep himself from — what? Crying out? Dropping to his knees to beg that they stop quarrelling? Holding her as tightly as he dares and saying that he will miss her, and he will try to write but he has never been much good at it, and though he cannot believe in the gods he will pray to them anyway, pray that he will return with a strong alliance and the means to protect their home, and their people, and her?

“I showed you the letter, Sansa. I asked what you thought. And I listened to you, I swear I did. You told me that Tyrion Lannister is a good man, that he was kind to you.”

This doesn’t seem to abate her anger: her face goes white and she crosses the room to him in a few quick strides, until she is close enough to strike him, close enough that he could catch her in his arms like he had the day they reunited. Neither of them lift a hand. “I _also_ told you,” she says, “that meeting with Daenerys Targaryen is not worth risking your life. And what of this other letter?”

“Other letter?”

“From Oldtown. Why did I only hear of it tonight, alongside everyone else? You didn’t even think to tell me about it?”

This gives him pause. He hadn’t shown her the letter, it is true, but he’d seen no need to. Sam’s letter made things so clear: Daenerys holds Dragonstone, and Dragonstone holds dragonglass. There’d been nothing to discuss, nothing to debate. But Sansa’s gaze is withering, and his stomach twists.

“Tell me this, then,” she says at last. “Why leave the North in my hands, Jon, if you trust me so very little?”

He doesn’t know what emotions flash across his face, but she draws back a step, as if to survey him from a better angle, her eyes so careful, so appraising. Sometimes when she looks at him he feels the knives all over again. Sometimes when she looks at him he is reminded of Petyr Baelish. “What are you _talking_ about? I don’t trust you?”

Somehow her expression grows harder, her spine straighter. She tilts her chin up, as he has seen her do so many times before, when she is haughty, and proud, and pretending to be sure. “If you trusted me — ”

Jon’s feet cross the short distance between them before she can finish her thought, drawing him close enough that her eyes must drop to meet his own, so that that proud and lovely chin might lower just a hair, just enough that he can see his sister behind her mask of cool indifference.

“Do I trust you? Of course I do, Sansa. Of course. You are my sister.” He wants to lay his hands on her shoulders and pull her into his arms, or take her bare hands in his own and bring them to his chest where his beating heart is a testament to his trust in her. He would be dead again, his spirit if not his body, if he hadn’t trusted her, loved her, followed her back to Winterfell believing that they might make it a home again. But she’s had enough hands on her, and, he reminds himself, he cannot afford to be ruled by want. Not now. Not with the army of the dead moving inexorably closer. So he simply tells her the truth: “I trust you more than anyone.”

“Then show it,” she snaps. But her eyes are softening, her pursed lips begin to part. He wants, he wants, he wants to make those lips smile.

Instead he says, “I’m sorry. Will you sit with me?”

They have spent most evenings together in her larger solar — the Lord’s Chambers are still hers, will always be hers, even if he is the king — but she has come to his rooms often enough that she has a preferred chair, angled just so beside the fireplace, with a line of sight out the window into the snowy dark. She likes to sit with Ghost curled at her feet, her sewing in hand, the firelight bringing out the shine in her hair. They do not talk much about the old days: for all of their history together, for all the time they have spent at each other’s sides, it is strange to think that they lived so much of their childhoods in parallel, Sansa playing princess with her friends and maids, Jon playing knight with Robb and Theon. She was never — well, rarely — unkind to him, but she was not his sister as Arya was. And yet when he saw her at Castle Black, half-dead on her feet, frozen-through and bedraggled as she had never been as a girl, how his heart had sung. She was a woman he did not know, a woman grown from a girl he had never really known, but somehow the people they are now, taken apart and reassembled as they have been by the horrors of the world, they are family. They are all they have left. 

Once, Sansa had asked, “Do you ever dream of them?” and he didn’t know if she meant their siblings, their father, her mother, or simply the whole world of lives and happinesses and petty hurts in Winterfell before Robert Baratheon rode in and shattered their lives, so he said, “I used to, but I don’t dream much anymore. Do you?” But she wouldn’t answer.

Tonight, she folds her hands across her lap and stares into the fire, sparking white and orange and blue, the flames licking up, up, as if reaching for something just out of grasp. Jon wonders how it would feel to be burned alive. He suspects she may be wondering the same thing.

When he can take the silence no longer, he says, “You’re right. I should’ve told you that I’d decided to leave. I should’ve told you that it will be up to you to rule Winterfell. I should’ve given you a choice.”

She snorts at that, unladylike and familiar. “There is no choice. I am the last Stark in Winterfell.”

He quirks a smile. “And you’ll be good at it. You already manage the castle. I think a kingdom shouldn’t prove too difficult for you.”

“No, I’d hope not,” she says. The iciness has thawed from her voice, but her tone doesn’t give much away. “It’s what I’ve been trained to do since I went south, whether I realized it or not.”

He remembers what she’d said about learning a great deal from Cersei. He wonders what lessons such a woman could have imparted.

Sansa takes his silence for confusion and says, “I was to be Joffrey’s queen, after all. And even after — I learned from Margaery Tyrell. And Littlefinger, of course.”

Lord Baelish. Jon despises the man, and sometimes he thinks that Sansa does too. Sometimes he is not so sure. Tonight she merely says, “He’s taught me more than he realizes,” and gazes into the fire for a moment longer before she blinks and glances back at Jon. “But you needn’t worry about him. Focus on our true enemies — to the North, yes, but in the South too. You are a good ruler and a brave man, and I know Ser Davos is clever, but you must not fall into Daenerys Targaryen’s trap.”

Banishing Petyr Baelish from his mind, Jon points out, “It may not be a trap. It may be an alliance.”

“An alliance _is_ a trap.” She arches an eyebrow. “One party will sacrifice more. One party will gain more. You must make sure you are on the winning side.” She curls and uncurls a finger in her hair. “I wish I was coming with you.”

He nearly leaps from his seat. “You can’t.”

“I know, Jon. I’m not an idiot. But I would be useful. I know you rely on Ser Davos but I fear he may not understand that forging an alliance is not so simple. And ... ”

“And?”

“And I would not have to watch you go.” Her eyes are intent on the fire, and the flickering shadows from the flames make it impossible to know if she is crying, but there is a wetness to her voice when she says, “It is not easy for me, you know. I’ve only just found you, we’ve only just made it home, and now you’re leaving me alone. It is what must be done, I understand. It is what Father would have done. But that frightens me most of all.”

She says, “I know you have seen terrible things, Jon. But so have I. I saw them cut our father’s head off. I watched that blade come down, I watched when he … ” Her hands clench in her lap. “I don’t know how to lose you too.”

Jon draws his chair nearer, leaning toward Sansa to place one gently hand atop her clenched one, just for a moment, just until she looks away from the fire and the shadows swim across her cheek. “Sansa,” he says, “do you want to know why I didn’t tell you I’d decided to leave?”

Her eyes dart to his. She nods.

“Because if you had asked me to stay, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to say no.”

She inhales sharply, and this time, she reaches for his hand, her grip strong. She doesn’t let go. “I did ask you to stay.”

He swallows and bobs his head. “Aye. In front of the bannermen. In front of the very people I have sworn to protect, the people who chose me to lead them because I would fight the White Walkers. I couldn’t forget myself there.” Her blue eyes remind him of nothing but her, not even her mother, not even the risen dead. “But if you’d asked me here, like this, if you’d said … ”

“Don’t go?” Shame swells in him as she continues, “Or perhaps: you promised to watch over me? You promised to protect me? You told me that wherever we went, we would go together?”

“Don’t,” he whispers. “Please.”

She stares him down a moment longer, fierce as — as a wolf, he supposes, as a creature of the North and the ice and the Winter, but then she lifts the hand she is holding to her mouth and presses a kiss to his knuckles, her lips as soft as a snowflake. “It’s all right, Jon,” she murmurs against his skin. Her breath is warm. “You are a good man. A good king. Father would be so proud of you. _I’m_ so proud of you.” He feels a hint of dampness — from her lips? from her tears? — before she lifts her pretty, unreadable face. “You could never do anything less than what is right. It is why our people chose you. It’s why I — ” She shakes her head and squeezes his hand once more before she releases it.

“Lady Brienne will keep you safe. And Ghost,” he decides suddenly. “Ghost will stay here with you. I don’t think he’d much like meeting a dragon anyway.”

She laughs a little at that, and he thinks how rarely he has heard that laugh, how precious it is. Will he ever hear it again? 

“Very well,” she says, and then she stands, brushing the dust from her skirt, brushing the wetness from her cheeks. She is the perfect lady once more, so he stands too, knowing it is only proper, despite the sudden weakness in his knees. 

“You must get some rest tonight if you are to make a strong start tomorrow.”

“Will you see me off in the morning?”

“Of course.”

He catches her eye. “I will come back, Sansa. I promise.”

Her smile is weak, maybe even sad. “Promise me that you’ll be smart. Be safe. You still believe in honor, but the rest of the world is not half as good as you. Don’t let that be your downfall.”

He can tell she is serious, so he nods, and then nods again, and just as he begins to wonder if he ought to put his arms around her and embrace her one last time before he leaves, she lifts the cool tips of her fingers to his cheek. Jon goes absolutely still. She is so close. He can smell the oils she uses in her bathwater, something floral and warm, and beneath that the salt of her skin. He has spent so much time beside her, he knows the scent of her, the way he knows the scent of Ghost, the way he knew the scent of Ygritte: it lingers in his sleep.

Her eyes flicker across his face, and he tries to keep the confusion from his eyes. He tries to remember any other shade of blue. He wonders if she can see how he wants, he wants, he wants. 

“Sansa?” he whispers at last.

Her hand drops to her side, and she turns on her heel. “Goodnight, Jon. I will see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight.” 

And then Sansa closes the door behind her, leaving him alone with his uncertainty, and his longing, and a premonition of the loneliness he will feel when he is no longer by her side.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Last Kiss" by Taylor Swift


End file.
